Protests in coal exit commission against NGOs’ phase-out proposal

A proposal by environmental NGOs working in Germany’s coal exit commission to retire 16 gigawatt (GW) of coal capacity by 2022 has led to “harsh disputes” in the body tasked with devising a plan for the fossil fuel’s total phase-out, Malte Kreutzfeldt writes in the Tageszeitung (taz). Industry representatives reportedly “yelled” at members of environmental NGOs who proposed to transfer 7.5 GW into a so-called security reserve in 2020 and to retire another 8.6 GW in 2022 in order to achieve the emissions reduction goal originally planned for 2020 two years later. Labour union representatives said the plan would have grave consequences especially for coal workers in the western coal mining areas in North Rhine-Westphalia, where most older coal plants are located, arguing that it would “suddenly pull the plug” on the industry there. 

Read the article in German here. 

See CLEWs Commission watch and the article Taskforce agrees on post-coal strategy for German mining regions for background.